


He Makes a Swan-Like End

by lanasauli



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Genre-appropriate violence, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, PTSD, References to Homophobia, author takes liberties with Eugene's childhood, holy shit so old, traiteurs, wrote this forever ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:03:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanasauli/pseuds/lanasauli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard and Eugene, during and after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Makes a Swan-Like End

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ forever ago, but I decided to clean it up and post it here.
> 
> This fandom makes my heart ache. :(
> 
> (Title comes from Shakespeare.)

One night, Eugene has a very different kind of dream.

There are expressionless walls that go up and up until time stops. It's a big white nothing until there's a smiling someone in front of him. Those barely there smiles are the nicest sometimes. But then Eugene's hands are full of candy nerites. They feel like glass and he's so afraid to drop them. But then the smiling someone closes his hands around Eugene's, and everything's kept from falling.

That's when the walls get borders and it's just a regular room. No one's with him. The candy nerites fall out of his tightly clenched hands. He'd look for them, but they're gone before they even hit the floor.

It's strange that he wakes up so upset. Everything's fresh for the first few moments, and suddenly, nothing's there anymore. He can't remember what or who it is that he lost, but he misses it all the same. So he grasps at handfuls of snow and frozen earth because his hands feel so empty, and he can't understand why. It's just a sick feeling of loss he has no idea what to do with.

It's funny because he's never asleep long enough to dream. Not here, anyway.

When he looks at Winters, he feels on the verge of naming that face in his head, close enough that it's filling his mouth, and then--nothing.

In Bastogne, the Germans never let him sleep long enough to dream again.

\--

Eugene hears Winters yelling for his attention, and his panic sounds like it's fighting through water. He's in an ocean, all of his own, and everyone is scrambling around on that tiny island dotting the surface – fighting, panicking, and bleeding. Eugene only knows this because he can smell the metallic stink of blood and he can hear the rising stress in Winters' voice – muffled, and just barely reaching him, but there.

He feels a current, a very strong one. He stays rooted and his body bobs back and forth, soothing him. He imagines it is either an ocean liner or a submarine approaching. The waves of the impenetrable blackness of the water grow more violent. Winters' voice is getting clearer, like it's being fed through the funnel of the tornado whisking the island away.

It's just a whisper at first, snaking around his head, through his ears; in and out of the valleys of his brain. Then it gets louder, more urgent. Constant repetition of his name; Eugene! Eugene! Eugene, Eugene, Eu _gene_...!

Then he's whisked away by the hulking current. There's a monstrous, evil force behind it – a sentient one, and that's so much worse. It brings him up, _up_ , and he wills himself to become heavier and sink down to the bottom again, where it's quiet and dark.

But he only grows lighter, urged up by some unseen force.

“ _Goddammit_ , Eugene!”

...Winters doesn't swear. He doesn't—never...

Someone forcibly pulls him from the unbreakable surface, and he's too stunned to fight it. And then he's back on the island, feeling the same kind of bone-deep chill of bare wet skin exposed to an arctic freeze.

He's not sure whose hands are on him. They're yanking him out of his foxhole, his ocean, his unconsciousness, and finally, his mind catches up. Winters is standing across from him, eyes wide and disbelieving, breath coming out in rapid, cloudy pants. He's on the edge of panic, and Eugene thinks about what would happen if Dick died _right now_ and it happened so quickly that he didn't know it.

His grandma used to say that spirits like that would haunt the places and people they're most familiar with, constantly searching for meaning, perpetually suck in the feelings they died with, especially if it was a traumatic death and they weren't aware of it. And they never know it; they never fully realize that they're dead because there's no such thing as linear time anymore. A moment is forever.

That always seemed like a fate worse than death to Eugene. His parents kept telling Mawmaw to stop with the scary stories because they were getting so tired of him sneaking in their room in the middle of the night to fall asleep at the foot of their bed. They told him being alone in the dark wouldn't change anything; he'd still die someday.

They told him it wasn't natural to be scared of death at seven years old.

When he looks at Winters, thinks about him slipping unnoticed out of life, thinks about his ghost and no sense of time, no sense of peace forever, he's realizes he's still so scared of death. But it's not the idea of his own that bothers him much anymore.

He thinks about the countless wraiths haunting this forest even as he dresses Smokey's wounds. He works so methodically now. He can't feel his hands, and he isn't sure if it's because of the cold or because of the disassociation, but either way, they're on autopilot. Separate entities. Foreign-feeling things attached to the ends of his wrists. His shell-shocked mind is free to wander all the places he wishes it wouldn't while his hands work feverishly to save a life, or prolong a broken one.

His grandma would be ashamed that he's disconnected from his hands. She'd tell him to channel his love into them; to truly heal with them, feel them pulsing with blood and life and give it to the sick.

He doesn't understand how she did it. How could she get so up close and personal with a dying person? How could she bring herself to [i]care[/i], when she knew very well there was a good chance they'd pass away anyway?

Winters approaches him when the chaos fades and Eugene tries not to look as shamefaced as he feels. The men need him. Winters needs to know he can depend on him. But just like the rest of Easy Company, he's not immune to the wilting morale. He's so worried about hysteria or developing some permanent mental block.

Winters is right to be worried about Eugene's mental wellbeing. Holding the line is already close to impossible. Doc is a vital link in the chain that they cannot stand to lose, because men are getting hurt every day. Spina is here, and he's very competent, but he doesn't have Doc's hands.

He doesn't argue when Winters tells him to get a hot meal. He can see how tight his lips are drawn; can see the bloodlessness of his face, and a frenetic gleam in his eyes that isn't really characteristic of him at all. The reality of Dick's momentary fear – his raw and unadulterated panic – finally sets in, and Eugene is overwhelmed with a kind of guilt he's never felt before.

And so he's compliant, even though he's sure he doesn't belong anywhere but here.

\--

He felt like he was floating.

It was like the time he sat at the edge of the dock, overlooking the picture-still lake his father liked fishing in.

He never saw who pushed him in, but it felt like Phillip’s knobby fingers. Phillip didn’t like Eugene because his dad liked to scare his boy about the neighbors and their evil voodoo.

Eugene didn’t really understand what about anything his mawmaw did was evil. She never hurt anybody, except herself sometimes, when she got too sick to heal anymore. Eugene couldn’t understand why anyone would voluntarily take on others’ misery, especially strangers. It was a sickness of the heart that shrunk her into nothing.

Eugene forgot to swim for a moment. He looked up at the dock from a few inches below in the deceptively cold water and saw the watercolor blur of the other boy lingering uncertainly, eventually darting away. The way he acted was more scared than hostile, Eugene remembers. So he never wanted revenge, mostly because he didn’t want to prove Phillip right.

He stayed under until he couldn’t breathe anymore, moody and stubborn.

Then he came inside and Mawmaw said nothing about what a mess he looked and the puffy red around his eyes. She stayed folded up in her chair with her late husband’s fleur de lis cufflinks clutched in her veiny hands, face almost grey. Sick and serene.

She was getting smaller, and the light inside of her was getting brighter and brighter, and Eugene knew she was dying.

He didn’t tell either of his parents. They were nervous people, easily unraveled and shaken. They couldn’t know. Not yet. They would ruin her good death.

Mawmaw had told him that death was a beginning, not the ending. So he smiled through his tears, even though something so inauthentic could not fit his face, and he didn’t make a sound, even though he wanted to scream until the pain came out from behind his heaving ribs and into this great wide nothing.

He wouldn’t wake her.

He played with her beads and necklaces. She had glass, shells, plastics, clays, crystals -- everything. They were tokens from the people she had helped, all symbols of the way her life had been swallowed up, of the love she had given and the misery she accepted in return. They embodied the depths of the sincerest love and torment that existed, and Eugene unknowingly held all of that in his tiny palms. It felt too big, but he couldn’t let go. It warmed him from the inside, and he didn’t feel the shivers wracking his small frame. And so he sat soaked, desperate to never need this kind of love, to never hurt like this, and he watched her chest rise and fall for the last time.

He had a candy nerite shell pressed to his lips when her grasp slackened on the cuff links. They fell at his feet.

He would fall asleep there, face sticky with tears he couldn’t remember shedding. And he would regret never promising her he’d pick up where she left off.

–-

Renée was his anchor to life before the war.

She had healing hands like Mawmaw. She couldn't create miracles or bring the men back to life, but she always made the transition to death much easier. They stopped screaming for their mothers when she touched them. They got subdued for those last few moments. That suspension between life and death is usually terrifying, screams coloring the blanched winter sky as they fight against the end, self-preservation defeating their faith in a good death.

But Renée soothed it. She made the good death, gave it as a final parting gift with her spent and nearly ruined hands.

Now she's nothing. Her irretrievable particles are vaporized into ash and pieces of crushed bone somewhere under the rubble, along with countless others, and it's like she never existed.

Everything's demolished, so he's not sure how her kerchief made it in one piece. It's smeared with plaster and soot, but he still sees periwinkle underneath the grime because it shines so much brighter.

Eugene feels a thickness in his throat as he thumbs the fabric gently. Everything's quiet for a moment. It's an internal silence, the kind that mutes the chaos outside and blankets his head in the stuffy cotton and sedation of barely acknowledged grief.

He comes out of it quicker than he did at Bastogne when help was needed. He's getting better at it; more accustomed to working with the blunted feeling than against it.

He doesn't think as he takes morphine syrettes and bandages from the broken bodies of the sparse nurses and doctors littering the area. He's efficient and precise, but he's really anywhere but here, and he barely sees his hands working to save re-wounded soldiers and civilians.

Reality starts to part the clouds in his head when he sees a hand reaching outside of a crevice underneath the rubble. He's sure it's a woman's hand by the delicate look of the fingers, long and tapering. But he does not once entertain the idea that it is Renée, because he knows her hands.

It must be a nurse. She might not be able to find her voice under the rubble, but even if she could, it wouldn't matter. It would get lost out here. It wouldn't leave the demolished church she is crushed under.

Instantly, he knows she's dying. He can't see her, but he knows, because he knows how dying people move if it isn't an injury traumatic enough to smash their lights out immediately. It's in the lethargic way she curls and uncurls her fingers. It's like he's being beckoned, and he approaches unhesitatingly.

Those fingers curl around his. He hopes that she feels what little warmth his flesh is radiating with, and he hopes that maybe the adrenaline has got his heart pumping enough blood that she feels something definitively alive within her dying grasp.

He squeezes her palm gently. His mind is clear now, and everything burns brighter, and he hates that, but not as much as the helpless feeling of not being able to pull the rubble off of this woman and anyone else under it. He hates that this is her grave, her undignified and filthy grave, and that there's nothing left to do.

Her hand is suddenly limp. Cold weight in his palm. He doesn't care if it's wrong to be relieved that she didn't live another moment.

To his right, he catches sight of Anna emerging from the smoke and rubble. She's clutching some bloodied bandages in one hand and what looks like a rosary in the other, but he can't really be sure. She looks so incredibly strong and capable, unhesitatingly falling to her knees to wounded men and women. She's here. She's here and alert and none of this is touching her, somehow, and Eugene doesn't understand, doesn't understand how she can do this without faltering until suddenly her sharp gaze meets his and he sees that it's not calmness; it's just resignation.

There's a mutual understanding that somehow calms his heart. He can hold his hands steady. He doesn't look long enough to see the grief in her eyes and the way her eyebrows peak as she swallows it. Maybe he would have excused his own devastation if he saw hers.

But it's gone in a flash.

–-

He reports to Winters the second he's back in the Bois Jacques.

He's been gone longer than the couple of hours he should have been. He's not sure by how much, but it's growing dim. He's a little shocked into numbness; nerves frazzled, because he has never seen a shelling quite like that before. The ones in Bastogne thus far have been almost manageable comparatively, since the damage was then at least sporadic. A wounded man here and there, dark uniform and bright blood easily visible against the snow. But it's more complicated when people are pleading for help underneath burning rubble, and only a crane could get the job done. It's not as easy to treat the wounded when most of the medical personnel are the ones needing treatment.

It's likely no one's heard, since the fortunate few civilians that made it out alive probably fled.

He ducks into Winters' makeshift tent and launches into his explanation without so much as a greeting.

“Sir, the Germans've shelled the hell outta the aid station. I...I don't know where we're gonna ship wounded men, because there's, there's nothing left.”

He swallows thickly and clutches the kerchief in his right hand.

“We got reinforcements comin' soon, right? I need more supplies, sir. I've...I got what I could back, ah, back at the aid station, but I'm still, still...you gotta understand; I don't have the supplies, what these men need; I don't...”

“Roe,” he starts, voice tight with the cold and restrained nerves. Eugene's slew of anxious prattling is stopped as Winters rises from his huddled position, cupping a mess tin full of something, and Eugene doesn't move as he gets closer; doesn't even flinch as Winters focuses his attention on the way Eugene is impulsively wringing his hands as if he could wipe the dried blood away. It's underneath his fingernails and inside his pores and no amount of scrubbing could ever clean it, but it feels worse not trying.

Winters proffers the mess tin to him. He can feel the warmth against his fingertips. It's such a contrast that it almost startles him, and his arms erupt in goosebumps.

Eugene belatedly realizes that it's soup made from a K-ration bouillon cube.

“Sir, that's your—”

“No.” Winters says solidly. He doesn't avert his eyes as he wraps Eugene's hands around the tin, presses it into his chest. “I'm sure I'm safe to assume you weren't able to get that hot meal you were after at the aid station. You need it more than I do.”

He explains this warily, patiently, eying Eugene like he's a caged animal. The medic finally accepts it, telling himself it's for the good of the rest of the company, that they need a functioning medic. And then he doesn't feel like so much of a parasite.

He takes the first sip, and suddenly, any ounce of guilt about taking more than his share melts away along with the tenseness of Winters' features.

Winters says nothing for a moment. Eugene shivers pleasantly as the warmth fills his stomach. He's too busy nursing the soup to notice Winters' curious gaze on the kerchief he's still clutching against the mess tin.

Winters’ fingers find it, smooth fingertips against the bloodied fabric, pressed against the tin and held up to Eugene's face. He suddenly remembers his dream. The candy nerites. The large, warm hands around his, keeping his hold steady.

His heart feels heavy and his ribs are too tight. It's really hard to look at Winters anymore, but even harder to look away. The medic doesn't flinch; shows no reaction other than slowed sipping and a cautious stare sent Winters' way.

Eugene doesn't explain because he wouldn't know where to start, and he's all out of talk, anyway.

He waits a moment. Dick is motionless, looks almost like a picture, eyes dangerously solemn and almost reverent.

“Eugene...” Dick starts, sounding shakable and not like him at all, and Eugene realizes that he cannot lose another.

He breaks contact, places the tin of half-finished soup in Dick's open hand, the one that caressed her kerchief with the kind of tenderness she always deserved, was born for, but only gave it instead, and the inverse is true for Eugene. He is sure now he was born to give, because maybe his grandmother was right after all. He was born to give, so he cannot receive.

“Thank you, sir.” he says in parting, and Dick's lips part like he wants to say something but doesn't know what. It doesn't matter anyway, because there are no right words.

Then Eugene is gone, and the silence shatters and disperses itself in all the sleeping soldiers' heads as artillery fire [i]pop-pop-pops[/i] in the distance.

–-

He settles in his foxhole and gazes at the illumination of the tracers. They streak white-yellow in black space. Some of them burn red before they die. It's so loud and jarring, he's almost surprised the stars don't fall.

He falls asleep with screaming meemies in the distance, bouillon warm in his stomach, and Winters heavy in his chest.

Life is suspended like this, with streaks of light so bright that they're colorless, and they blot out the rest of the shadows until he can breathe outside of the snow.

\--

Eugene would forgive himself for lying to Jackson.

He said it would be okay when he knew it wouldn’t be, but Jackson stopped wailing and seizing.

Death did come, still and quiet. Jackson let it in without a fight.

So maybe it really was okay.

\--

“It wouldn’t have made a difference if you’d been there when it happened, Roe.” Winters tells him meaningfully, angling his lean body away from the typewriter and toward Eugene. “Jackon’s injuries were too serious. It was a freak accident, and there was nothing anyone could have done for him.”

“I know that, sir.” Eugene tells him with an edge of impatience, eyes darting between Winters and the typewriter. It’s about Jackson. It might be an official report or maybe the letter that goes out to the parents – probably that, Eugene amends in his head when he sees the tight, solemn line of Winters’ lips and his sallow expression.

It probably says a lot about pride, defending his country, fighting bravely; everything his parents would want to hear. It will say nothing of how his own grenade killed him. Not a word that his death was agonizing, that he fought it until the very end. But it probably doesn’t ease the hurt any less. Eugene hopes that he never has to feel the pain of losing a child.

“It’s jus’ that,” he continues, voice now controlled and calm. “there’s no tellin’ what’ll happen on this patrol, either, and I’d like to be there. Just in case.”

“It’s a relatively simple mission,” Winters explains. He looks reticent and unsure, like there’s something he wants to say but can’t, and when he makes a move to turn back to the empty letter that is full of words, Eugene forgets rank; forgets the stoicism he used to hold onto so dearly; forgets that clipped, controlled tone he’s so exhausted with using, and the words break free.

“This war is all but over, and we’re still losin’ men! We already got our goddamn prisoners. They talked. I won’t pretend that I even begin ta understand why we got to do this…this second patrol, when we got what we wanted from the first one – at the sake of a man’s life. But as long as Easy’s doin’ this, I…I ought to be there this time. You don’t know what’ll happen.”

His voice shakes, growing solemn, words wilting and escaping his lips with a chill that Dick catches.

Dick’s eyes look haunted and tired, and he knows, he knows all this, better than anyone. He’s not hiding how wrecked he is anymore. Eugene is starting to sorely regret coming unglued, and then Dick sighs airily and says the last thing Eugene ever expected to hear—

“No one is going on that patrol.”

And then Eugene really looks, sees for the first time, that Dick is not typing one of _those_ letters. It is a report of the second patrol Easy will never go on. And this war, this goddamn war; it has to be over now.

The tired relief Eugene feels makes his bones weak under the weight of his uniform. Tension he wasn’t even fully aware of slips away and through the cracks of the floorboard, and it is both rejuvenating and exhausting at the same time to be without it.

Dick is standing up, looking rankled, and he’s saying, “Oh, Eugene,” sounding mostly cautious and hesitant but there’s some elation there, too, as he guides the daunted medic to sit on the bed to get his equilibrium back.

“Here, just sit for a minute.” Dick murmurs, sounding more subdued now that it’s finally been said.

His eyes are heavy. He’d never really appreciated heat until now. The air is thick and warm and it fills him slowly, settling under his fatigues and pooling in his chest. It makes him feel sleepy, but not in the exhausted way. He forgets about his hunger; forgets about the way his blood felt like it had frozen and turned to sludge; forgets about the war, for just a moment. He’s barely aware of his arms sliding out from under him, reclining back, and sinking into the comforter. It swallows him up and he doesn’t want to breathe outside ever again.

“Eugene,” Dick’s voice urges his eyes open. Reality doesn’t sink in as quickly as it should. He’s still sleepy-drunk and he can’t even place Dick’s face with his title, and barely his name, because those are superficial things.

This could be forever right now and he’d never even know that it wasn't until it ended. But it doesn’t matter, because every moment seems endless when you live in it.

Eugene props himself up and sees that Dick is a little flushed, eyelids heavy and posture too relaxed and easy to be standing.

He leans forward, smoothing the bed sheets at Eugene’s head. The medic can feel the warmth of those hands near his face, and he shivers and can’t keep from breathing those shallow, light breaths as Dick angles himself closer, body bent in a pretty arc over Eugene. He’s not even being touched but his body is reacting like it is, so he tries to force himself back inside his head, nerves and all, but he ends up wearing them on the outside of his skin anyway and if Dick touches him when he feels like this—

His breath hitches audibly and he shudders as those fingers soothe the tension in his brain, carding through his hair. Dick stops to rub his thumb against Eugene’s temple lightly, looking maybe just a little uncertain behind that distracted glaze in his eyes.

The closeness doesn’t make him nervous like it should. He doesn’t think about why he shouldn’t do this – he doesn’t think at all – just sees Dick’s sleepy, warm eyes, looking and acting and feeling just too benign to be real. So Eugene leans forward, angling his face in the curve of the other man’s neck and feels that fervid pulse against his mouth.

He’s still for a few moments. He likes the vibration against his lips as Dick hums lowly, deep in his throat, and those hands brushing against his chest a little hesitantly. Eugene swears he can feel the heat of that palm bleeding into his uniform, through his ribs, then lacing around his heart to keep it quiet.

His lips start moving, easy and almost languid at first. Down…down, across his collar, then just below his throat, nose brushing lightly against the small bump of an Adam’s apple. He feels it move as Dick swallows thickly. Eugene almost stops, because he’s not sure if it’s a sign of nervousness or…no, can’t be that, because Dick’s lips are still trailing down his temple; toward his ear. Sort of tickles. So he gasps harshly. Can’t help it.

It’s innocent enough, sure. But he can’t help but like how the way his skin heats up all over; can’t help but be intrigued and even happy at the sound of Dick’s quiet murmurs and sighs as he kisses his way up the other man’s jaw. And then Dick meets him halfway and there’s not an awkward second that they pause and wonder, because then it would just be gone.

It’s slow at first. A little uncoordinated; clumsy. And then that self-restraint that has been keeping Eugene Roe somewhere in the neighborhood of sanity snaps into tiny little fragments. Then his happily addled brain buzzes while Dick’s lips part, sighing heatedly against the medic’s mouth. It’s probably accidental. But it escalates this, sends it rocketing into some sphere of adulthood Eugene never felt before because he may as well have been a kid before the war.

But it doesn’t matter anymore as Dick relaxes into him. It doesn’t matter that he never got to be an adult at home. It doesn’t matter that he can’t remember the transition between child and man because it just happened too fast. It doesn’t matter that he can barely remember existing in a life outside of this one.

It’s fine for now.

Part of him is still wanting. He ignores the ache in his body and keeps his hands where they are – one at Dick’s hip and another at his chest – because he’s still not sure what’s okay and what isn’t. Continues kissing – nipping; sucking gently, not really sure if it should be like that but doing it anyway because it just feels really good.

He flushes under those hands as tiny shivers have him curling into the willing body above his. And Dick responds in kind.

He’s not really sure at what point they taper off. It just happens and he’s a little bothered that he can’t remember what started this or how long he’s been here. His internal clock is missing. His eyes are heavy and it’s probably later than he’d like it to be.

He disengages a little gingerly to lie down properly. He’s still poised to leave. Just in case. But Dick says nothing, and Eugene is afraid to check if he’s looking still, if this is all he wants, or if there’s something else still unacknowledged. He's sure there is. But it would be wrong in Hagenau.

The light grows dim as Dick turns out the kerosene lamp. And then everything is preserved and suspended in the nothingness blanketing the walls and his insides.

He decides that’s just fine, too.

-

-

-

He's never truly shaken the chill in his bones since Bastogne. It has lessened a little, sure. It's tolerable and sometimes he ignores it to the point that he feels lukewarm inside. It's alright when he's distracted. It's easy to put the chill in the back of his mind when he's pouring over his textbooks, comparing different cell types and muscle fibers. He knows what the fascia feels like. He knows how startlingly warm and pulsing it is, even when exposed to the coldest frigidity a person could imagine. It's so pretty and neat-looking in the diagrams, just perfect, but it looks so foreign to him. He's familiar with injuries. Severed muscle, broken skin, and shattered bone.

Men with debris from the trees lodged inside the body had it pretty bad, pain-wise. But shrapnel was the worst. He remembers seeing the white of tendons and bone peeking out from the shredded flesh and muscle, being irritated that he couldn't gauge the extent of the damage because the blood kept gathering in that pulsing hollow of flesh. And then the guilt started gathering in the hollow of his chest, and he couldn't feel irritated anymore.

He likes the anatomy because it is distracting. He likes Grey's pictures because they're beautiful and he understands them, and because that's all he knows.

But when it's nighttime, and there's nothing to distract him, it's just the shadows in his head. They play tricks on him. They make him think it's cold when it's hot and humid. His hands and feet get that strange pins-and-needles feeling like they always did in Bastogne when something was going a little numb. His hands feel sticky with blood and sometimes pieces of human beings, and sometimes, if he closes his fists tight enough, he can feel the graininess of it drying, or, worse, he can feel himself reach inside someone; can feel the blood congealing prematurely again because it's just that cold.

Sometimes, his ears still ring with the deafening sound of screaming meemies. Sometimes it's Buck's voice, that time when he truly broke, calling for a medic. Eugene remembers panicking for a split second at the sound of it, because Buck had never stuttered like that; had never snapped, even in the face of the worst brutality imaginable. So it was bad if it shook Buck.

Then Eugene thinks about Guarnere and Toye, how they're getting around with one leg each now, and if either of them of found a wonderful woman who understands the best she can, and suddenly, he's ashamed with himself. He's walked away in one piece. He's doing well. So he can't understand why it's so hard to just stop ruminating like he is, when most everything's the way it should be again.

That makes it easier to bury the sounds somewhere in the stuffiness of his head; the feelings somewhere deep in his chest. And then he can sleep with the cold inside him, the blood on his hands, and the animal noises in his ears, because he's done it before, and he can do it again.

There are nights when he feels something very different, though. It's a memory of something soft and warm, and so very removed from the brutish reality of war, it has no place existing in the same universe. Sometimes he feels himself pressed into the bed under Dick and the warmth of breath at the hollow of his clavicle. He liked to kiss Eugene there.

He sees behind his closed eyes, too. He liked it especially when Dick hadn't shaved for a day and he felt the scruff against his face when they moved close together; when they had enough time alone for Eugene to sufficiently muss that red hair between breathless kisses and half-cautious, half-gluttonously indulgent touches, spurred on by the quiet groans echoing in his ear.

Those nights are the hardest to sleep through. And it's not really that he can't; it's that he won't, because sometimes that pervasive warmth is so palpable, he could swear Dick is right there with him, and the contrast between that and the countless frigid nights he has had to sleep through is just too beautiful, just too welcome of a relief to be unconscious through. So those nights, he voluntarily lies awake with his eyes closed, in a pleasant daze, floating between sleep and wakefulness for what could be hours or minutes. It doesn't make a difference. He feels those hands all around him, lips everywhere, kissing languidly. And for those hours or minutes or moments, it doesn't matter that Dick is miles away, because to Eugene, he might as well be right there.

Sometimes his mind takes it too far. He gets too involved in the pretty apparitions and the warmth almost bursting out of his chest, and he starts believing his own lies. He comes to in the morning – or in the middle of the night, as the case may be – much too often like he is now, twisted in his sheets, damp with his own sweat and the humid air. There are tiny tingles underneath his skin where he swears he has been touched, which is nearly everywhere.

He inhales sharply at the feel of pleasure nipping at the top of his spine and radiating downward, in places he knows it shouldn't. The air is heavy and it coats the inside of his mouth like cellophane. There's that same insistent desire that first started enveloping him in Bastogne and hasn't let up since. He's still too scared to fully acknowledge it for what it is.

He wills his arousal to go away on its own. It's not usually this bad; this insistent thrumming all over inside his body. His need won't go away. There's a part of him that doesn't want it to, and that's what's probably sustaining it and preserving those phantom touches on his skin.

Eugene is only half-aware of his hand slipping into his loose sleep pants. He tries to consciously forget what he's doing because he has a tendency to really overthink things, especially where Winters is concerned. Any inhibitions lay scattered at the ragged edges of his composure the moment he touches himself. He relaxes, sinking deeper into his bed as the pleasure unfurls and pulses, first between his thighs, then all over, alighting every nerve when he loses himself in a fantasy he's too far gone to be ashamed of right now.

In his head, he sees his hands running down Dick's body, slipping inside his underwear and grasping him. He feels the heat throbbing against his palm, imagines a breathless voice in his ear pleading for more. His fingers are wet with precum. His knees shake and most of the muscles in his body are tensing and relaxing repeatedly. He rocks upwards, imagining Dick is above him, pressing down, wanting to be joined, but Eugene is too tantalizingly close for that to be worthwhile, so he continues to stroke and rub and they move together like they always wanted to but never could during the war.

Eugene's breath is coming in rapid pants now, tiny noises escaping his lips as he nears the edge, despite how hard he's trying to be quiet. There is still a small part of his mind in the present.

“ _Oh_...” he breathes, low and quiet and needy, and he can't restrain the little thrusting motions his hips are making. It's instinctual. It's been too long since he's done this, and it is too good.

His limit is pulled and stretched taut so that he's only quivering nerves, and his muscles are tight and his body is erupting with the kind of pleasure that almost makes him delirious. There's a blissful, breathless moment, where he's at the point of no return, and he wills himself to be quiet because if he lets himself continue to make those little noises, near silent as they may be, he's not sure he'll be able to stop himself from saying that name.

Suddenly, the delicious tension snaps, and he bares his neck to a lover that is not there as he's overtaken by his climax. It only lasts a few moments, but it seems like forever in that short span of time because his body is finally catching up with months of none of this. It's unreal. It starts in his groin, races up his spine, and settles in his head where his brain buzzes pleasantly as he comes down.

He's still for a few moments, consciously thinking of nothing so that his heart gets a chance to regain its normal rhythm. He's not sure what he's feeling. Maybe there's a little shame, the kind that's been indoctrinated in him since he was a child, but it's not as overwhelming as he thought it would be. As awful as the war often was, and as much as Eugene secretly resents it, it did put things in perspective. That religious and social shame was never more irrelevant when his comrades were being reduced to pieces sometimes too small to even recover.

And then Dick softened it, somehow soothed some of the anger and pain, and Eugene can only hope it was symbiotic, can only hope he had something left to give to Dick, too.

\--

The day he finds an apartment is the day he gets the letter.

It's obvious at first glance that it's personal and not business, and that's why his mother is so damn curious about it. She's really bad at masking how pleased she is, and neither of his parents has made much of an effort in keeping their concerns about his lack of a social life a secret.

He barely notices that she's irritated he goes to his room to read it. His heart's thrumming and his hands have gone clammy. He expects to read about a wife and maybe even a kid soon-to-come, since he knows that's the first thing on most men's agendas the second they get back home. Of course Dick would settle down; he wanted that, some peaceful life in rural America with no reminders of his service. It's a healthy aspiration; one that Eugene wants to have but doesn't, and that's why his mother is worried, and that's why is father is angry.

But Dick is nowhere near rural America. The return address is somewhere in New Jersey he's never heard of. Then he realizes he should know better than to assume things.

He sits on his bed under the window, knees curled up to his chest, and reads.

Dick writes about Nixon getting him a job; writes about missing Pennsylvania. There are some loaded words Eugene's not sure what to make of, like _there are a lot of things I'd like to forget about the war. There's so much that went wrong. I don't miss most of it. But there are a few things I don't mind thinking about._

And that's not really like him at all. Nothing liked the clipped, distantly polite tone he uses in the way he talks. He can't imagine Dick writing this, sitting down with a pen and stopping long enough to actually _miss_ \--

And he stops that line of thought right there. Dick must know he thinks about it, too. Must know that it wasn't something that just happened in a fit of frustration and loneliness.

Eugene remembers waking up the morning they were due to go home. There wasn't a sound, he didn't have a nightmare, and Dick was completely still in bed, but he just woke up. Bright and alert at 4-something in the morning for no reason at all.

He looked at Dick tangled up in the sheets, half-naked and breathing so silent Eugene almost got anxious. He stared at the tiny valley of pink, rough skin where the ricochet had tore into his calf. Eugene's own leg had grazed it earlier, funny accident, as they were moving together, and Dick had shivered. Not in the good way. Eugene had stilled, shaken all of the sudden and not really sure what to do. But then Dick told him _it's okay_ and _don't stop_ , and he hushed the apology at Eugene's lips with his own.

And that was when he realized there was probably not a soul in the world that would understand like Dick did. He didn't like the achy dependency squeezing his throat, that something that was too big to be called affection...and, least of all, that panic sinking deep in his stomach when he thought about life without--

That's where he stopped. That's where he slipped out of bed and mindlessly wrote his address on a scrap of paper. He didn't think about what he was doing as he placed it in the pocket of Dick's uniform thrown carelessly at the foot of the bed.

Dick probably wouldn't find it until he got home, Eugene had reasoned. He had tried not to think about what would happen if this amounted to nothing. Or if it amounted to something. He figures the address in Dick's PT uniform pocket speaks for what's worse.

Eugene half-regretted doing that until now. Stupid hang-ups on whether or not it was his place to even suggest this could exist somewhere else and that nagging insecurity. It was that increasingly familiar flavor of cynicism constantly wearing down his nerve, telling him to just leave this alone. _Dick won't want it after this_ and _leave it alone._

But it was strangely (blessedly) quiet that night. His nerves braved it. He didn't need the words. Dick would read in just an address: _I want to see you again. ___

\--

His apartment looks unlived in.

The walls are bare, but the man standing in front of him is a stark contrast to the blinding colorlessness of everything else. Eugene thinks he must look hollow when he sees this sudden vitality, and he almost doesn’t believe it when the side of Dick’s mouth quirks in the smallest but sincerest sign of happiness Eugene has seen since he’s been back to the states.

Dick says his name almost soundlessly and he looks like he’s forgotten himself.

It’s cold – not Bastogne cold, no, never – but it’s wet, rainy. Not in the warm humid way he’s used to, and his chilled skin feels so good against the warmth inside of his chest.

Dick’s eyebrows suddenly shoot up and he grimaces to himself like he’s just now remembered something, a second too late, but it isn’t, Eugene wants to tell him, coming inside as Dick opens the door wider for him.

The air is so comfortably warm, it’s heavy.

“Oh,” he says to Eugene, looking vaguely alarmed. “You…I’ll, I’ll get you something to wear.”

And then Eugene finally realizes he’s almost soaked. He couldn’t feel it before. Must've been distracted. He can’t get past how strange Dick looks without snow or foxholes or a half-dilapidated billet in the foreground. But there's still that stress dampening his bright eyes.

The rain feels like it's everywhere, pricking at his skin and working into his marrow, and he’s letting himself be ushered into a bedroom, a too-warm palm resting on his forearm. But it's just that split second. The moment he looks down, Dick lets go.

Eugene looks at the bed and feels uneasy. He tries to imagine that Dick sleeps soundly. Still and quiet, so deep that he wakes up with mysteriously lost time, and he does not spend hours – does not even spend a moment – thinking about the war, agonizing over what he did or didn’t do. Eugene tries to imagine Dick isn’t like him.

He’s ruffling through the dresser drawers, flinging seemingly random articles of clothing on the pristinely made bed for Eugene to change into. Dick spins around to face him. He looks a little rattled. Eugene is not sure how he looks, but he feels like a mess. His clothes are sticking to him like a second skin; wet and heavy on his chest. Makes his breathing slow; deliberate. He tries to calm his heart while Dick stops and just stares for several charged moments. His legs don’t feel so steady anymore, not when he’s being looked at like that. He tries not to feel self-conscious. He’s half-worried that the heat is showing on his face. But there's that potent relief of being here, too. Probably unreasonable and dangerous to embrace something like that - a dependency so unrelenting it's almost sick.

He can’t figure out what’s happening to him; what’s happening inside of him, inside his chest and his head, both aching with a sweet kind of pain with every throb of his heart.

He forgets the feeling of chilled rain water on his skin. He’s warm. Feels like the ice freezing his blood to sludge is only just thawing.

He slips into the kind of thoughtlessness he did in Hagenau, not stopping to think out right and wrong. He knows it’s okay when Dick’s shoulders relax, his eyelids falling half-mast because the static is suddenly muted, and he meets Eugene halfway.

It feels too natural. Just familiar, like this is just something they’ve done every day since the war’s been over. Their mouths move against each other, slow and languid. It’s like time started working again in America, and seconds and minutes and hours made sense. Were just there. Slipping by with a tick of a clock or a change in light streaming through the kitchen window.

But time’s gone again, just like it was in the war. Eugene only knows moments. And this one’s like endless, he’s pretty sure, when Dick kisses him like that, coaxing open his lips with a nudge of his tongue and shaking him out of his cold as hands find their way up his rain-damp shirt.

Fingers trace down his spine – that inward arc of it as Eugene presses himself closer; flush. Super-sensitive all of the sudden, the way Dick follows the tapering of Eugene’s waist, holds his hips in his warm palms, and then—

Waits.

Dick pulls away suddenly. His pupils are all blown up and his breath is shallow and quick against Eugene’s parted lips.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs, distracted and faintly troubled, and Eugene guesses he is, but he didn’t notice it until Dick pointed it out. “Oh…oh, I’m sorry, here, I’ll—” Dick starts, clumsy and awkward all of the sudden as he pulls away and makes a move toward the door.

It’s almost funny how Dick misunderstands like that and Eugene really ought to just let him go, get dried off and dressed and forget and know that this isn’t appropriate and he should be okay with that – _haven’t been in here for more than a few minutes, for Crissakes_ – but he doesn’t.

“I’m not cold.” his mouth says before his brain tells it to. And it’s kind of a lie, because he is pretty cold. Wasn’t before, but the chill is inside him now, settling in his heart and making his skin burn with both warmth and a biting chill. But then Dick stops, turns around. Moves all halting and unsure, and that’s not like him at all. It shouldn’t be like this. It’s wrong this way.

Eugene’s skin burns under the weight of Dick’s silent question – _then why are you shaking?_

Eugene approaches this time and doesn’t take the time to wonder why because he knows he’ll lose his nerve if he does.

He really should answer the questions in Dick’s eyes, but he can’t. He could never bring himself to say it, not even in his own head. Not after what happened to Renée. Not when he realized he really did have more to lose. And he knows it’s all over now, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

His hands settle on Dick’s hips, fingers shaking under the weight of his anxiety and his need. And then he fits his lips against Dick’s again, fleeting and almost gone when the mouth under his is slack for just a moment longer than it should be.

But then—then there’s a barely-there whisper of his name against his lips, and finally his mouth is moving, lips parting again almost instinctively.

Dick’s fingers graze the nape of his neck. Sensitive. Well, everywhere is. The warmth bleeds into the top of his spine and it unfurls all the way through him, and that’s why he can’t keep from groaning. The sound is mostly lost inside Dick’s mouth.

He shivers hard as hands slip underneath his shirt, not realizing how chilled his skin really is until Dick’s hands are on him.

He pulls away to breathe, just long enough to see Dick’s mouth. It’s kiss-bruised and wet, and there’s something about it that makes him shiver with arousal. He feels himself getting flushed, kind of embarrassed and actually happy. He knows Dick knows by the way he watches him. Finally dawns on him, and Eugene’s torn in a flurry of mortification and want.

He starts to pull away. He’ll give Dick an out he half hopes he’ll take. But those hands only urge him closer, and that’s when he knows there’s no way he’s going to walk away on his own.

And then they’re messing up the disturbingly immaculate sheets, nerves suddenly alight with something after being numb for so long. Eugene never realized until now. He tries to slow his breathing as they undress each other with awkward, halting movements. But he can't. Not enough air, definitely not enough when his chest gets tight as Dick kisses his way down. His sighing turns into gasping, feathering the damp red hair Eugene almost unconsciously threaded his rain-wet fingers through moments before.

His stomach clenches as he tries to swallow a moan. He wants to curl in on himself as the other man rears back a little, sees him completely bare. But he's achingly aware that he's not the only one. He wonders if Dick is running through the same things in his head, wonders why he so much likes the masculine curves of lean muscle, and why, if this captivates him, there's never been anyone else.

He wants to touch back now, really, really wants to, and his fingers and lips are tingling in anticipation, but he's just out of reach now. His mouth is back on Eugene's skin, where he left off at his hip. Dick is slower now, looking up with a question in his eyes that Eugene could never bring himself to verbally answer, but his body does when the pleasant warmth turns into something too goddamned hot. It's under his skin all over and definitely between his thighs, pulsing impatiently. The stuffy noise in his head is quiet now. He stops worrying. Stops being so disconnected, and then he's in his body again. It's been a long time. He can't even remember when he left.

" _Ohh_ ," he groans, a shudder breaking from him. He can't help it. He thrills at the mouth on him, the puffs of warm breath so close to his need. Shivery little sighs slip past Eugene's lips, and then the rigid line of Dick's back doesn't look so tense anymore. He moves down toward Eugene's arousal with a lot less hesitancy now.

As he takes Eugene into his mouth, it's obvious he's never done this before, in the cautious way he moves, clenches and unclenches his hands in the sheets at Eugene's sides like he's not quite sure what to do with them. But Eugene's body doesn't know the difference and that knot of pulsing heat starts to loosen. Thrilling little impulses of warmth turn into mind-numbing pleasure that leaves him shuddering and pleading uncontrollably.

“Please. Oh, god,” he hears himself say, and it's almost scary how it sounds nothing like him. He stops short of saying anything else, because he knows, as torn open as he is right now, he'll regret whatever it is when he comes down from this.

He looks down and almost wishes he didn't. Never seen anything quite so indecent, but he can't tear his eyes away. Eugene likes looking at him, seeing him so flushed and finally relaxing. Easing himself into it. He feels Dick's hair grazing the inside of his thighs as he mouths him, very thoughtful in the way he moves his tongue and lips. He pleasures him thoroughly; patiently.

And then he's swallowing Eugene up. The edges of his lips move, round and tight; up and down. His mouth is so wet and goddammit, he's not stopping; he's just pressing Eugene further down, inside his too-good fever; makes it worse when Dick's hands find his hips. Good god, those hands. Large and warm and not at all forceful. Just steadying.

Eugene concentrates on keeping his hips still. It feels like he's being pulled taut in all directions. Every beat of his heart sends him deeper into it, into that euphoric body-high.

"I'm, uh," he starts to warn, hands at Dick's shoulders going slack as everything tenses in the best way. "You need to st-stop; I'm..."

There must be something serious in his voice because he pulls his mouth away then. Eugene shivers at the wet sound and surprises himself by meeting Dick's eyes.

"What?"

Eugene can't stand the alarm in Dick's voice, like he's wondering if something's wrong; if he's doing something wrong. _God_ , he wants to say, _it's not that at all._ So he needs to explain. But he can't find the words without swallowing them again. There's something about just saying it that would be pushing it too far; making it too real.

Eugene looks at him, kneeling between his thighs, starting to raise his head--and he prays Dick won't ask what now with his eyes--and, god, he looks so pious. It's probably one of the more fucked up thoughts he's ever had, but he can't help it when Dick looks at him that way.

"It's..." Eugene tries, swallowing thickly. Starts again. "Not...in your mouth."

Dick blinks. Eyes widen. He sighs a breathy _oh_ and Eugene is ready to crawl out of his skin. He closes his eyes and pretends he never said anything, and then, before he realizes anything's changed, there's a muffled, "I think it would've been okay," against his neck. Dick can say something like that and still sound almost wholesome because he truly means every word of it.

Eugene leans forward and meets his lips impulsively when there's nothing in his face that says no. The kiss is looser and less changed with nerves when he feels a hot firmness pressed against his thigh and he knows that they're both worked up over this. Eugene barely touched him, and when he thinks about it - thinks about how little it took for that neediness and urgent heat trapped between them - his own need worsens, and he whines quietly under Dick's mouth.

Then they shift. Hips press together; it's almost instinctual. It shouldn't be this natural but it is.

Dick is panting against the side of his mouth, "Gene, oh god, Gene," as he rocks forward. Eugene thrusts rhythmically, barely thinking anymore. He pulls back a little to see; he has to see. And then he's in awe of Dick's eyes and how they're brighter than he's ever seen them. So he brings his hand between them, wondering if (hoping) they'll get brighter.

Eugene grasps the rigid length in a hand shaking with arousal. Dick's lips part, mouth partly ajar. His eyes flutter shut and he stills for just a moment. He grimaces, almost like he's in pain. And then, in a breathy half-whisper:

"Doc,"

He almost falters. He's not Doc here. He hasn't been since--god, no, not now, not when Dick is looking at him like he knows.

"I didn't m--" he starts, little parentheses framing the corners of his lips as he frowns, and Eugene kisses him until that mouth relaxes under his, because the war has no place here.

Then they both forget, for a second. The pressure makes everything feel too tight inside, muscles tensed and ready. He strokes thoroughly; unrelenting and almost greedy in his craving for the other man's responses.

The noises Dick makes are almost measured now. Constant, between hitched breaths. And then, then he's finally there, trembling and breathing like people sometimes do before they die.

He curls into Eugene and moves like he's salvaging it to the very last thrill of pleasure. Looks at him through hooded eyes, still shaking a little. And then Eugene finally feels the tension snap. There's one last violent shiver snakes through his body and something squeezes his heart until the blood gushes and all of him is on fire.

It's Dick's name on his lips when he climaxes. Impossible to have any delusions about this now. Maybe he shouldn't have said it; made it so personal and obvious it's who this is about, not what.

Dick doesn't say anything. He looks sated and sleepy. Dreamlike.

But behind that.

He's afraid to put a name to it. But he knows what it is.

He looks away suddenly so that Dick doesn't see the secret he has kept since Bastogne.

\--

He's apologizing again.

_Sorry this keeps happening. Sorry I keep waking you. I’ll go—_

But Eugene usually stops him there with an impatient frown.

Dick wakes himself up thrashing in his sleep at least a few times a week. Eugene wakes him up the other times. He sits up in bed when he comes to, just like this, eyes wild and unseeing for moments. Just suspended somewhere in the black-bled dark of their room while both of their heartbeats pulse inside of their heads. Then he looks at Eugene; waits as he leans over to turn the lamp on because he’s pretty sure neither of them are going back to sleep tonight—

So Eugene will get up and make coffee early—

And ignore the sound of Dorsey through one of the paper-thin walls and a couple making noisy love through another—

Or just stay in bed until the sun comes up. This time, he will. He tries to ignore the crippling fear in his chest when Dick grins at him wanly because it’s just too strained to be anything but wrong. Everything is whitewashed with the light on. It’s ugly and almost electric blue, and it makes Eugene want to bury the other man inside of him so that he doesn’t have to see it.

So he won’t get up just yet. He’ll spend the morning wide awake in bed until the sunlight peaks through the pillows shoved in the window because the curtains let too much in. And so he sits up, slipping behind Dick. Parts his legs; sets his knees against the side of Dick’s ribs. And now he’s just waiting for the word or even the slightest tensing under his roaming hands and he’ll be gone, back to making coffee and pretending not to hear things that remind him of domestic life, because he almost hates it. Because Dorsey, that’s just too mundane and safe to be real, and if anyone heard _them_ through the walls—well, they’d be out of here. Wouldn’t matter at all that they’re veterans if people knew. So Eugene whines quietly into the pillow or sometimes Dick’s chest when he can’t swallow all of the noise.

When Eugene feels Dick’s shoulders shake, head bowing and hands gripping the sheets, he knows that’s how it’s going to be with grief, too—swallowing the noise and pretending not to be ashamed of what little slips through. And Eugene hates it. He wants to be able to ride this out as loudly as they need until it itches inside his throat because there’s no more breath, until, when there’s no more noise, the quiet is so still it’s almost scary.

But this is it, right now. Hitched breaths and a quiet, barely there, “ _God_ ,” and that’s when Eugene realizes the only other time he’s seen another man cry was in Landsberg.

Eugene swallows against the dry ache in his throat, rests his face in the curve of Dick’s neck, and just wishes to God he knew what to say.

He lets his hands fall down Dick’s chest. Damp and clammy. Still in a cold sweat from whatever it was he remembered. Eugene is relieved that at least he’s not smiling emptily anymore.

He closes his eyes before his pupils can shrink to pinpoints against the blinding whiteness. Presses his mouth to the skin between Dick’s shoulder blades, trailing slowly up his spine. That’s when he prays for the first time since he’s been home. It’s fragmented pieces from St. Francis of Assisi. Dick doesn’t usually feel like this, all bony angles with the cold-hot fever of panic still thick on his skin.

“Shh. You’re okay. You’re okay.” he hears himself say, even though he’s not sure. And so he figures he must sound as uncertain as he feels, must sound so insincere and placating and he kind of wants to take it back, but then...then it must be okay, because Eugene feels him relax just a little under his hands. It’s just enough for Eugene’s hands to sink into him deeper. Reach him deep inside his chest. He hopes Dick doesn’t notice that his fingers are shaking.

That’s when he understands how his grandmother could do this to death with the one regret that there were still sick people she would never be able to touch.

Eugene presses his palm to Dick’s chest and gives all he can.

\--

He takes the only candy nerite he saved everywhere he goes. Presses it to his lips every time he leaves. Dick doesn't know why yet, but he probably will someday.

He goes to school through the GI bill and comes home stinking of formaldehyde. It's pungent and acrid, but it's nothing like blood.

Dick asks him one day why he wants to go back to this, and he tells him it's because it's all he knows how to do. There are days that he's not sure he likes it, but it always feels right, so.

That's that.

He gets a letter from his mother once a month. She thinks he's gone after a girl and she keeps asking when the wedding will be, keeps reminding him not to live together until that day. _But I know you're a good boy._ The paper's always kind of yellowed and brittle like it's centuries old. He reads it when he's at the door and the whole world's asleep but he's just getting home. He'll worry about writing back when it's almost too late; always happens. Then he'll slip into bed after a shower; wishes he could do that without waking Dick, but it always happens. Dick never minds. Just smiles lazily, almost absently. Then his hands are around Eugene's. Always so cold.

So Eugene rubs the circulation back into them and decides he doesn't mind he's still Doc.


End file.
